Plague World

by Alex Scarrow

  He could choose to go back. And he definitely was going to go back there at the earliest opportunity, but first, far more importantly, there was work to do. A full debriefing. He needed to tell these men everything he’d experienced and what They had asked him to convey to these wide-eyed men waiting beyond the thick glass.

  ‘Give me a little . . . more time.’ His throat and mouth felt bone dry. ‘May . . . I have some water?’

  ‘Of course,’ a voice responded. A moment later he heard the delivery hatch clunking. No one was going to fetch his drink for him, so he gathered his strength and sat up. His still-knitting arm peeled wetly from the floor, several small ‘feeding’ tendrils snapping and falling away.

  He clambered on all fours across the floor to the hatch and opened it, reached for the beaker inside and then poured some of the water down his throat, savouring the sensation of rehydration.

  He felt a little more strength return to his cumbersome frame. He pulled himself up by grasping the edge of the table and then let himself down heavily on to the chair. In front of him, on the tabletop, he could see the spread-out construct of Grace’s ocular organ. Before he’d gone under and joined her he’d been repulsed by the sight of it: pink, purple, quivering and glistening. It looked so fragile, exposed and raw.

  But now he admired the economy of its structure: the simplest organic circuit to deliver Grace visual feedback of what was going on in this room, sending that data down to her consciousness.

  Why make a whole eyeball, an ocular cavity, a skull, a brain . . . when just a small lens, a cluster of photo-sensitive cells, optic nerves and a brainstem would do?

  He smiled at the ingenuity of it.

  ‘What’s amusing, Choi?’

  He shook his head. They won’t understand. Yet.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. He drained the glass of water. ‘Another water please . . . with sugar. Lots of it.’

  He waited patiently for someone beyond the window to organize that. A few minutes later the hatch clunked again. He reached inside, pulled out the cup and this time drained the sweet sugar solution in one long chain of noisy gulps.

  ‘That is better,’ he announced.

  ‘Lieutenant Choi, are you ready to talk to us about this . . . uh, this experiment?’ That was the prime minister’s voice he heard.

  Jing nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. While you were . . . gone, we compiled a long list of questions that—’

  ‘How long was I . . . immersed?’

  ‘You were away for seven hours.’

  He arched his dark brows. ‘Seven hours?’ It had felt like days.

  ‘Yes. Now, Lieutenant Choi, as I was saying, a number of experts have assisted us in compiling a list of questions that—’

  ‘I will answer your questions. But first . . . I must pass on a message.’

  Rex Williams regarded the men sitting around the long oak table – a mixture of the survivors of his cabinet from two years ago and an assortment of military uniforms. They were staring at him as if he’d brought a sacrificial goat to the table, slaughtered and gutted it right before their eyes.

  He repeated what he’d just said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘That’s absolutely insane, Prime Minister!’

  ‘Choi was “returned” unharmed, just as Grace promised he would be.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that he hasn’t been changed in some way we won’t be able to detect. He could now be weaponized – some sort of viral Trojan horse,’ said Dr Calloway.

  ‘I understand that. And we will continue to keep him in isolation for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘You understand, Prime Minister, that if you do this you’ll have to be quarantined too?’ said Calloway.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Possibly indefinitely.’ Calloway looked around the table for support. ‘You’ll be rendered ineffective as leader of the committee?’

  ‘I know. But we have to treat this for what it is. Crazy as this must sound – and, God knows, it sounds crazy to me – this is an invitation from one civilization to another to sit down and parley. Now we know the virus can cross the oceans at will, we are at its mercy.’

  ‘We have access to weapons, Prime Minister.’ Bullerton turned to look at Xien. ‘Subject to the Chinese agreeing.’

  ‘You’re talking about using nukes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How many nuclear warheads in your arsenal, Captain Xien?’

  The officer glared at Rex, poker-faced for a moment, then finally he spoke. ‘Before the outbreak I would be court-martialled for telling you this. Most likely shot. But –’ he offered a wan smile – ‘much has changed. We carry twenty-four warheads.’

  ‘Twenty-four?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Twenty-four warheads is not going to protect us for long.’

  Rex pointed at the fuzzy print of the long-range radar scan; they were looking at a tear-shaped blob off the north-east coastline of North Island. It was three hundred kilometres away and travelling their way very, very slowly – little more than two kilometres an hour.

  ‘In six more days it’ll land on North Island,’ said Rex. ‘It has asked to speak to us before it does so.’ He looked around. ‘It can wipe us out,’ he went on. ‘It doesn’t need to talk to us . . . but it wants to.’ He spread his hands. ‘We’re fools if we don’t acknowledge that. It wiped out the rest of our world in just a few weeks. The only reason we’re still alive here is that none of the first wave of infecting spores came to ground in New Zealand.’

  ‘We could evacuate.’

  ‘And go where?’

  The room was silent. There was no answer. There was no place left to run. Rex would have been relieved if someone had raised a hand and suggested a viable alternative to submitting himself to the same process as Choi. Really. He would.

  ‘It has invited me to go and talk with it. So that’s what I’m going to have to do.’

  ‘What about the Americans?’

  ‘What they decide to do is up to them.’ Rex shrugged. ‘If they’re smart they’ll do the same thing.’

  Bullerton stood up. ‘Prime Minister, if you expose yourself to this virus, we will have to select a new acting leader. There’s no way we can accept you back.’

  ‘I’ve already worked that bit out,’ said Rex. ‘If I do this, perhaps I can negotiate with the virus to leave New Zealand alone. Perhaps I can assure it we’re no threat. But, if we respond to this request with a nuke, I suspect we won’t last very long.’

  He laughed nervously. ‘Worst-case scenario, if it, you know . . .’

  Kills me? Eats me? Turns me into slime? Jesus Christ. Am I really doing this?

  ‘. . . just kills me, then you gentlemen will need to go and pick a new leader anyway.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Clearance: 43kk

  Timestamp: 23.09.00.12

  Source: radio, external.

  Encryption: Seleass34

  Transcript for: President, Eyes Only

  Message:

  This is Rex Williams, spokesman and acting civilian head of the PNA speaking. And this is a message for acting President Douglas Trent. This communiqué is encrypted, Douglas. I know you’re not keen to talk with us, I’m guessing because we have the Chinese on board with the PNA. Fine. This isn’t a conversation. It’s a heads-up. One of our long-range recon planes has picked up a large viral structure that appears to have crossed most of the Pacific just to get to us. We can now safely conclude the virus no longer seems to be held back by the sea. And that changes everything. I’m guessing another one may well be on a course towards you. If you have long-range planes and fuel for them, I’d get them up in the air to start looking for it.

  There’s something else you should be made aware of.

  One of the ships in the fleet that cooperated with yours, collecting survivors from Britain and Europe, picked up an infected virus carrier. A young girl. I’m sure by now you’ve been briefed on what happened ove
r there? That this virus can make completely convincing facsimiles of people? The girl has presented herself to us as some sort of diplomatic ambassador with an invitation to myself to come and ‘negotiate a truce’ with the virus in person.

  What this means in practice is that I willingly submit myself to infection, to be partially broken down, ‘ingested’ if you will, into its ecosystem.

  I’ve been assured that I’ll be returned to my former self once the talks are concluded, free of any harmful effects or any hidden infection. We have already had a volunteer undertake this process – ingested and returned – and while he is still in quarantine it does appear that he’s unharmed.

  This is going to be a huge act of trust on my part.

  Crazy as all of this may sound to you, we’re taking it seriously over here. If the viral structure approaching us reaches these shores, then it’s going to be over for us. If we try to nuke the bloody thing, then we’re presuming that it’ll simply make another one. Plus, that may put an end to any further offers of negotiation.

  If this plague can negotiate, if it wants to talk, I believe I owe it to the people here to go and listen to what it has to say.

  If you’ve already been presented with a similar scenario, I strongly urge you to do the same and to think of it as a first meeting of civilizations. If you haven’t yet been approached this way, then you may also have an ‘emissary’ among your quota of rescued people, waiting to make contact with you.

  Mr President, I don’t know whether this virus thinks the same way we do. It could be taking this meeting as an opportunity to determine whether we’re a threat or an irrelevance.

  That’s [– unclear/indecipherable –] to begin with. Oh, there’s one other thing. Our viral ‘ambassador’ explained to us that she’s some sort of hybrid of the virus itself and the person she was before she became infected. She’s given us a name and claims that you actually know her? Whether confirming that fact gives you some comfort that the virus is levelling with us, or not, I give you the name she gave us:

  Grace Friedmann.

  End of message.

  Tom stared at the name printed at the bottom of the page, afraid to takes his eyes off it even for a second in case it became someone else’s name when he looked at it again. He felt waves of heat and cold wafting over him, his skin and scalp prickling. He reached out for the back of the chair to steady himself, then finally he looked up at Trent.

  ‘That’s why I called you in here, Tom.’

  ‘My . . . my daughter . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, your daughter. It seems she’s very much alive.’

  ‘They’re . . . saying she’s infected?’ That came out sounding more like a question. Like he needed Doug to clarify the point for him.

  ‘Yup. Seems she is.’ Douglas Trent’s hard, pinched face softened ever so slightly. ‘I’m sorry, buddy.’

  She’s . . . infected? But alive. Alive!

  ‘I’ve already given orders to lock things down, Tom. We’ve got spotter planes in the air. We need to know if one of these goddamned viral things is heading our way! I’m going to . . .’

  Trent’s voice was background noise right now as Tom looked down at the note again and re-read the last paragraph. Single words stepped out of the blur of smeared print: ‘hybrid’, ‘viral’.

  Hybrid. That one word gave him a shred of hope. Hybrid. Half of. Part of his daughter still existed, then a part of Grace was still alive. Jesus. He had no idea what that even meant.

  He’d begun to think of himself as a grieving father, to concede the loss of both his children, accept that he was adrift, a loner for whatever time he had left to live.

  Then this.

  ‘. . . and if those sons of bitches can cross the sea, then that means those damned saline tests must be a load of bullshit,’ continued Trent. ‘We’ve gotta look at all those people you rescued, again! We need to develop another kind of test. Shit! I need to get our people thinking about another kind of test we can use to . . .’

  Grace.

  Tom scanned the transcript again. The Prime Minister of New Zealand seemed to believe that there was an intelligence behind or within the plague; that his proposition wasn’t as insane as it sounded; that he was going to have a cosy chat with the common cold, smoke a peace pipe with a Petri dish full of slime.

  ‘. . . coastal defences. Or maybe even set up an inner defensive area. Build walls, big ones, and then we just hold out and let this hellish thing hurl whatever it’s got at us . . .’

  ‘Mr President?’

  ‘. . . Jesus Christ. I need to know if we got one of these things coming our way and how long we’ve got to—’

  ‘Doug!’

  Trent stopped his rambling and looked up at him.

  Tom waggled the message in the air. ‘We might also have someone we can negotiate with. Talk to? You know, someone right there in our holding pen?’

  That part of the message seemed to have completely slipped Trent’s mind. His eyes suddenly widened. ‘Christ! Shit! You’re right!’

  They stared at each other, Trent frozen to rigidity by the notion.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Tom finally.

  The President didn’t seem to hear that. His wide blue eyes were right through Tom and somewhere far beyond. ‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘Shit. All those people . . . !’

  ‘There’s about eight hundred of them, Doug.’

  ‘. . . all those people . . .’ he muttered again, ‘crammed in that warehouse . . . together!’

  ‘I know.’ For a moment Tom wondered what the president was getting at. ‘I’ll go in, Doug. I’ll do it!’

  Trent shook his head slowly.

  ‘Look, I’m volunteering. I can find out who the infected messenger is and—’

  ‘No.’ Trent waved his hand in a way that said the discussion was done. ‘No. No one’s going in. No one’s going anywhere near that . . . Dammit. We’ll torch the whole goddamn building and—’

  Tom slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘Doug!’ The sharp, aggressive tone silenced him. For the first time. Ever. ‘Rex Williams is right! If this thing is crossing over seawater, if it’s coming for us, then we’re totally screwed! It’s over! It’s all over!’

  ‘I’ll nuke the bastard.’

  ‘If it can cope with salt water, then maybe it’s already colonizing everything under the surface right now! Which bits of the Caribbean sea are you gonna bomb, with your remaining nukes, Doug? Huh? You got enough nukes to do the whole sea?’

  ‘Or we abandon this island. We leave the goddamn Cubans and we get back on our ships and we—’

  ‘Or we can negotiate!’

  ‘Negotiate! Are you crazy, Friedmann?’

  For the first time, Tom realized Trent had one of his hands spread across a fire arm on the desk. Not holding it, but leaning on it, as if mere skin contact with the cold metal of its grip was what he needed to reassure himself, to validate his command, his authority. A comfort blanket.

  He’s losing it.

  ‘Doug,’ Tom said quietly, ‘we’ve been invaded by something we never could have imagined existed. Something we could never have prepared for. This is the whole War of the Worlds thing, OK? It’s just like that movie, and we got our butts kicked. All of us did.’

  Tom didn’t want to look down at the gun.

  ‘Just like a crappy movie. But . . . this time it’s real, Doug. And you’ve got responsibilities. We’ve got responsibilities. To however many Cubans there are, and to about thirty thousand Americans and eight hundred Brits.’

  Trent was listening. Nodding.

  ‘If . . . we take what’s in this communiqué on face value, and, Doug, we do need to verify this, right? Get a reconnaissance plane and eyeballs up there in the sky?’

  Trent’s face remained impassive. Still listening, but not necessarily agreeing.

  ‘Then, if it’s true, Doug . . . it looks like it wants to talk. So let me handle that part, OK? Let me take that bit off your shoulders. Let me be the one
to go into the containment building, find out if we have an “ambassador” in there and do whatever needs to be done to open up a line of communication.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Trent nodded again. ‘Yeah . . . maybe we need to get a line of communication, or . . . something.’

  ‘And we should also be communicating with the guys in New Zealand. We’ve got to start talking to them.’

  The president’s eyes seemed to be off somewhere, glazed over and a million miles away again.

  ‘Doug!’

  Trent’s attention came back to him. He narrowed his eyes. ‘How? How’re you going to do that, amigo? How’re you going to open up a channel with this . . . bug?’

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  Trent’s face remained frozen and impassive, his state of mind impossible to judge. Then Tom saw the faintest hint of a smile widen his mouth.

  ‘Do what you have to, Tom.’ He settled back into his chair, looking tired, his hands coming back off the desk, off the gun and settling into his lap. He said again, ‘All right. You do what you have to. Meantime . . . I better go find out what sea monsters’re coming our way.’

  CHAPTER 29

  Freya,

  I’m probably not going to do this any more – write these stupid damned letters. I’m not sure it’s doing me any good. Freya, just be alive for me, OK? And if you’re with Grace, look after her.

  Live long and prosper, as Spock says.

  Love, Leon.

  It was a cold foggy morning. The water of the English Channel lapped at the jetty, sulking like a scolded child. Leon and Jake were queueing outside the Ocean Spray Chippy for the second-sitting breakfast. The chalkboard set up ahead by the glass door showed they were getting something different this morning.

  ‘Rhubarb and blackberry stew?’ Jake made a face. ‘Is that even a thing?’

  ‘At least it’s not cod chowder.’

  Leon looked up the jetty and counted nine fishing boats tied up. Their fleet was back in from trawling last night and their catch had already been taken into the restaurant to be gutted and filleted ready for dinner that evening.